Declaration of Independence with Key

The first five pages are the text of the Declaration of Independence broken up into chunks, giving students the opportunity to paraphrase and summarize eight different smaller chunks. The teacher can start with large group paraphrasing, modeling deciphering meaning, after he or she gives context of the document. The teacher can then move to small group pair and share summarizing, reporting findings back to the group, and then the teacher can end with students individually summarizing and analyzing the last sections. The second five pages is a key along with notes on rhetorical devices used in the speech.